For reasons which are usually described as having regard to the public
interest, and also because of the Censorship in war-time, it is not
possible to relate in any detail the interview that took place between
Jimmy Burke and Captain Crouch and a certain Admiralty official, who may
as well be called the Director-in-Chief of the Naval Secret Service.
This gentleman--by name Commander Fells--knew the
superintendent-detective as well as any of his own immediate
subordinates. Though it was by then past ten o'clock at night, they
found him in his office, hard at work. Though he wore the uniform of a
naval officer with the three gold stripes of his rank on either sleeve,
his was the pale careworn face of a man who works at a desk--moreover,
for long hours of the night.
Etheridge stayed no longer than was necessary to introduce Crouch and
Jimmy, and to explain the important business upon which they desired to
see Commander Fells. The detective then took his departure in haste on
being told that the enormous Rolls-Royce car for which he had telephoned
to Scotland Yard was waiting for him in Whitehall, outside the iron
gates that guard the entrance of the Admiralty.
Alone with his visitors, the Commander lay back in his chair, and
closing one eye, looked hard at Jimmy with the other. A little later,
he twisted round sideways, so that his elbow rested on the back of the
chair--a position that enabled him with comfort to bite the end of his
thumb--a habit not to be encouraged in those who are still at school,
but excusable no doubt (for the sake of Empire) in Commander Fells. A
singular thing in this man, who was undoubtedly one of the
powers-that-be in the Navy, was that he wore no medal ribbons on the
left side of his coat, the sole decoration with which he had ever been
honoured being the plain blue medal of the Royal Humane Society for
saving life at sea.
There were a great many things he wanted to know. His method was quite
different from that of the Scotland Yard detective who had
cross-examined the two witnesses earlier in the evening. Whereas
Etheridge asked an infinity of questions, the Commander simply requested
Jimmy, and then Captain Crouch, to tell him all they knew. When he had
heard both stories, had seen a copy of the cypher message, and turned up
von Essling's name in a Prussian Court directory, he got to his feet and
walked quickly out of the room. He returned in about an hour, saying
that he had talked the matter out with an exceedingly high official
(whom it would not be possible to mention). He asked a few more
questions concerning Rosencrantz, and Rudolf Stork, and then turned to
Crouch.
"You must understand," said he, "that in a matter like this absolute
secrecy is necessary. From the moment you leave this building, you are
not to breathe a single word of what you know to any one. For all that,
we are exceedingly grateful for the information you and your young
friend have brought."
"The Grand Fleet, sir, will be warned?" asked Crouch.
The Commander bowed his head.
"That has been done already," said he. "Five minutes after I left
you--that is to say an hour ago--Sir John Jellicoe was made acquainted
with the possibilities of the raid. Torpedo-boat-destroyers were warned
to keep a sharp look-out for German submarines in the vicinity of the
Well-bank light-ship. You say that this man Stork means to put to sea
in a smack called the 'Marigold'?"
"That's so," said Crouch. "And if you have no objection, I should like
to make a suggestion?"
"By all means," said the other.
"I may not look it," Crouch went on, "but I'm a sea-faring man by trade,
though I have spent half my life knocking about on land. At one
time--when I was little more than a boy--I went to sea on a trawler. I
know the North Sea as well as any smacksman, and it so happens that the
part I know best is this same Well-bank, where the U93 is supposed to
be. And now, sir, here's the point; I've an old score to pay with
Rudolf Stork; he's fooled me twice already, and if ever he does it
again, this foot of mine's not cork. I know every fathom of the Dogger
Bank, and I ask nothing better than leave to go to sea, and run down the
'Marigold.'"
"Good!" exclaimed the Commander, slapping Crouch on the back, "you shall
have your wish and a 'permit' to see you through. It's hardly likely
that we should stand in your way when you want to do no more than help
us."
Though the one was an officer in the Royal Navy and the other no more
than an honest merchant captain, there is--as we have said before--a
kind of bond that binds all men together who learn to read the face of
Nature in the changing aspects of the sea. As the oceans are wide and
the seas many, so do all sailors who leave port under the red or the
white ensign belong to a great brotherhood that lives one life, whether
it be in ward-room, in gun-room, or in stokehold, that runs the same
risks and faces the same cold and tragic death, for the honour and good
name of that same old England that centuries ago ousted the Don from the
Spanish Main and carried the British flag from Pole to Pole. There was
this in common--though they never thought it--between Captain Crouch and
Commander Fells, R.N.
It was long after midnight when Crouch and Jimmy Burke left the
Admiralty. By then, they had received the most minute instructions as
to what they were to do; they had also been supplied with a certain
amount of money from the Secret Service funds, as well as a railway
warrant and a roll of Admiralty charts.
Before daybreak they were travelling northward. In undisputed
possession of a first-class carriage, they made themselves as
comfortable as they could, and having been assured by the guard that he
would wake them up before they reached their destination, they were soon
fast asleep.
Captain Crouch was able to sleep like a dog. All his life he had been
accustomed to drop off whenever he wished to, for an hour or so, or
sometimes only for a few minutes at a time. It was probably because of
this that he had retained well into middle age much of the vitality and
enthusiasm of youth. In spite of the fact that his hair was touched
with grey and inclined to thinness on the crown, in spite of all the
hardships and privations he had undergone, Crouch, for all practical
purposes, may be regarded as a young man. He now gave an exhibition of
the extreme simplicity of going to sleep at will. He took off his
coat--which he rolled round his white bowler hat--in order to make a
pillow--wrapped himself in a tartan rug he had bought that afternoon,
curled himself up like a hedgehog, wished Jimmy good-night, and a moment
later was snoring like a pig.
Jimmy's case was altogether different. Young though he was, he found
that on such an occasion as this sleep was no easy matter. Unlike the
little sea-captain, his had not been a life of adventure and excitement.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought it possible that he
personally would take part in so tremendous an undertaking.
The whole thing was amazing. The Scotland Yard detective had appeared
to have little or no doubt that "Valentine" was the Baron von Essling
himself. It was, indeed, quite possible. Von Essling had told
Rosencrantz that, in all probability, he would visit England, and he may
have done so at the time of the outbreak of war. Also, there was
nothing to prevent him repeating his visits, disguised and under an
assumed name, as often as he liked. In these days of quick travelling,
the journey across the Atlantic seldom occupies longer than seven days.
The secrecy with which the whole plot had been laid, and the care with
which every detail had been considered, spoke volumes for German
efficiency and organization. No one in London--least of all in the
Edgware Road itself--had thought for a moment that the large block of
untenanted flats had been purchased outright by the German Government,
in order to be used as the headquarters of a gang of spies. The
military attache went about his business in Washington, the capital of
the United States, and no shred of suspicion rested upon himself.
Nothing had been overlooked. German agents had been found in Hull; and
a fishing smack, the "Marigold," was able to put out from an English
port and patrol the high seas on behalf of the German Navy, which dared
not show its face within range of the great fifteen-inch guns of the
British super-Dreadnoughts. Stork had been specially selected for work
of a singularly dangerous character, and there was little doubt that his
services would prove of inestimable value to those who controlled the
destiny of the most formidable nation in arms that any country has ever
been called upon to face. But, perhaps, the most remarkable thing of
all was that the whole plot should have been discovered as it seemed by
a mere stroke of luck. Had it not been for the particular gust of
wind--a little eddy in the air, in mid-Atlantic, hundreds of miles from
the nearest land--that blew Stork's cypher message back upon the deck,
nothing would have been found out, and the Secret Service Department in
the Wilhelmstrasse of Berlin would have been able to carry out their
plans unimpeded.
It was such thoughts as these that kept Jimmy Burke awake. And when, at
last, he fell asleep, it was to dream in a vague disjointed way of
Rosencrantz and Rudolf Stork, the thunder of the "Dresden's" guns, and
the silent, shadowy form of the U93, gliding northward to the fog-soaked
Dogger Bank.
How long he had actually been asleep he never had the least idea, when
the door of the railway carriage was thrown open, and the guard seized
both Crouch and Jimmy by the shoulders and shook them to wake them up.
"Here you are, sir! This is Hull."
Jimmy sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was broad daylight and bitterly
cold. The few passengers and railway servants that were to be seen upon
the platform were all enwrapped in mufflers and overcoats.
Crouch sprang to his feet, cast aside his tartan rug, and jammed his
battered white bowler on to the back of his head.
"Come on!" he cried. "If Stork's here, there's no time to lose."